A few days ago I was added to chat with Michael and Arthur from PNI, PoktFund founders (PoktBlade, Daichi), PoktScan founder (Michael O’Rourke), and Thunderhead founders (Addison, Pierre, Sevi). Arthur wanted to get the ball rolling on LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh payouts. With SendWallet being paid out already by the DAO, before exiting the room, I had what is written below to say.
*This is important, as what I was saying was a message to them and not to the community. I will be following the message with more of my opinions to the community.
___ word for word ___
I’ve been pushing for LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh to get paid for sometime now. Some argue that is irrelevant to PEP-49, I of course would argue the opposite. We can’t move on to a whole new year and start handing out pokt when our top contributors haven’t been paid out. Of course Geo-Mesh hadn’t submitted yet, but im of the opinion that PNF should have been helping push that forward sooner rather than later. Thank goodness we have moved forward on that end in the separation of PNI from PNF. Hopefully they are more supportive of community builders going forward.
Some points and numbers I’d like to throw out. These numbers are AFTER LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh get paid out for last year.
I pretty much agree with all of Sevi’s points. I think you guys should follow through with most of them. But y’all is a private company and that’s your shit. Not trying to get involved with that, but with PNI being the biggest builder in the community, for the sake of my livelihood and my bags, I need to watch what happens there closely.
Now the numbers -
Ritesh and I will be submitting a DAO proposal for 2m pokt for 10 months of work Feb 15th - Dec 15th. We will do all the design for PNI as it relates to the protocol. This could be anything from the site, the portal, marketing materials, eth denver. Anything they need, we will take care of. Then we will move onto the site and whatever PNF needs. And from there to community design - poktdao twitter, poktnews, reddit, poktscan (if they want it), rpc meter, pokt.watch, pokt.info and whatever else the community needs us to design. As long as it’s not for a staking service and directly beneficial to the community, we will handle.
More on POKT allocation now
PNI - 40m pokt of which 20m should be paid back as Sevi said. Sevi said all should be paid back, not sure i agree. but that’s y’all proposal, these are just my opinions.
Paid out over 18 months
PoktFund - 10m pokt
PoktScan - 10m pokt
Thunderhead - 8m pokt
SendNodes - 8m pokt
To clarify on how this will be spent among SendNodes - 444k/month. 300k of it will go to our engineers. 100k/month for Don, Dire, BigBoss. The existing 144k/month will go to our treasury and this amount will apply existing company equity percentages. I would hope the other teams would do the same, but i can’t control that. We can’t make big moves forward if the best talent is not being compensated - the engineers.
So why the $Pokt to these teams. PNI needs to be more collaborative with v1 work. Theres no reason why your v1 product manager (jessica?) can’t get with Addison and Don and start working more amongst the 4 teams. Figure out what is missing and how PNI can start offloading some work to community builders.
Olshansky
PoktBlade
Dire
BigBoss
Pierre
Jorge
Ramiro
I’m sure there are a few others on those teams. Especially for PNI.
78m pokt in total (Ritesh+Ethen design, PNI, TH, PS, PF, SN).
This leaves the DAO with 47m pokt minus what is paid out for LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh. Keep in mind the DAO still takes home 2m/month. So while still spending on community proposals, they would still be left with approximately close to 50m pokt if they spend about 1m pokt a month on various proposals.
end
Now to the community:
I was hoping LeanPOKT and Geo-Mesh would be paid out before PEP-49 went to vote. I know its up to those respective teams to submit their proposals, but pretty disappointed in the PNI team for theirs to go out first. Oh well.
As I said, I agree with most of Sevi’s points and think PNI should have to pay back some of that 30m. At least half, if not, you guys really lucked out after an absolute disaster of a year.
Ritesh and I will be submitting a proposal for any and all design work that anyone needs from the community. Whether it be a project, an individual, or a team. We will not be designing for staking services. We’ve already begun work on a rebrand for PNI and the protocol. We will focus on the main site and onboarding App Builders and Node Runners. We’ll do some graphics from time to time pertaining to v1 and the progress being made there. We’ve also finished a landing page for the DAO and PNF, that will be the beginning stages of a more thorough website containing: Members, Treasury, Voting, Proposals, and Becoming a Member. We expect to make lots of progress there in the next month with considerable input from the 5 members.
Designing as with anything is order of operations and we want to make sure we are going in the right order while not neglecting any community projects or individuals. We will have monthly progress reports and want to be held accountable. Expect this proposal next week. 2m $Pokt paid out over 10 months the 15th of every month. Ritesh and I split everything 50/50.
Now let’s get into the community engineers.
As I’ve said, I think the 4 major teams need a payout similar to PNI. I’ve lowered the figures as they have lowered their ask.
Paid out over 18 months -
PoktFund - 7.5m
PoktScan - 7.5m
Thunderhead - 7.5m
SendNodes - 7.5m
I’ve also brought Thunderhead and SendNodes up to PoktFund and PoktScan levels. Our teams are just as good as theirs.
So the reason for me continuing to ask how PNI employees will be paid out, is because we have no problem doing that from SendNodes.
To break down the 7.5m if we were to get that:
416,667 $Pokt/month
Don - 95,000 $Pokt/month
BigBoss - 95,000 $Pokt/month
Dire - 95,000 $Pokt/month
SendNodes Treasury - 131,667 $Pokt/month
This puts us at 68.5% of funds going to our engineers.
I don’t know how the other teams would distribute funds. This is just an opinion of how I think things should be done. There are some really smart community developers that are not contributing enough and have had to look for employment elsewhere. Really good devs don’t get into crypto to wage slave, they’re here to collect tokens. And bounties are good but comparable to commissions. The point of building in crypto and web3 is to get the builders to replace the venture capitalists and angel investors. Instead of paying with money, they pay with their time.
Figures can go up or down depending on the time commitments for each of the teams. I think the 4 teams should get together and see if this is a viable plan. I’d also like to see the 4 teams submit a group proposal.
For those of you that think its too much - again, engineers don’t get into crypto to be paid out in USD. To continue down that path is rejecting this new world of incentivization. Also, if they were to be paid out in USD, and 6 months later the price was to double or triple, they are technically diluting their payout as the price pump has a direct correlation with the work they’re doing.
Considering the DAO prints about 2m tokens a month, this would leave them with more than enough as we’ve mostly had funds just sitting there accumulating for a time like this.